OsakaWayne Studios/Getty ImagesIn July, Google launched NotebookLM, a notetaking software with a large language model at its core to act as a personalized AI collaborator for all of your notetaking needs. Now, Google is expanding the platform’s offerings with a dozen new features, including an upgrade to Google’s most advanced large language model (LLM). On Friday, Google announced that NotebookLM is starting to use Gemini Pro, a version of Google’s most advanced LLM, Gemini, which was released earlier this week. Also: AI in 2023: A year of breakthroughs that left no human thing unchangedGemini was released in three different sizes, Ultra, Pro, and Nano, to make Gemini suitable for different tasks. Gemini Pro is being used for NotebookLM because it is the best size for scaling across a wide range of tasks, according to Google. Alongside the LLM upgrade, Google added a dozen new features to optimize the platform based on early tester feedback, with the most notable being a new noteboard space, suggested actions, and formats for different writing projects. The new noteboard space gives users a place to save excerpts from their sources, their own written notes, or interesting exchanges with NotebookLM, such as quotes from chats. The suggested actions feature dynamically suggests actions to users based on what they are currently doing. For example, if a user selects a passage while reading a source, NotebookLM will automatically offer to summarize the text, according to Google. GoogleNotebookLM also has new formats that can be used to transform user’s notes into structured documents. All the user has to do is select a set of notes and ask NotebookLM to create something new. To make the process even easier, the platform will automatically suggest formats such as “create a study guide” or “create an outline.”Also: Two breakthroughs made 2023 tech’s most innovative year in over a decadeFor the full list of the new features, you can visit the latest release notes here. Since July, NotebookLM has been available as an experimental product in Labs, and now Google is expanding its availability to users in the US ages 18 and up. If you want to try it for yourself, you can visit NotebookLM or Google Labs to get started.
